Bukoliki

The original piano version of Lutoslawski’s Bukoliki was written in 1952, two years before the Concerto for Orchestra, when Polish composers were still required to observe the rules of socialist realism. This meant that their music had to be based on folk song and that, among other restrictions, it had to avoid “formalist” procedures. But, just as in the Concerto for Orchestra, the composer found ways round the regulations. Certainly, the five short Bukoliki are based on folk song - their basic material is drawn from Ladislaw Skierkowski’s collection of songs and dances from the Kurpie forest - but the harmonies contained within the apparently simple, basically two-part textures are far more sophisticated than rustic title of the work was intended to suggest. The metrical manoeuvres - like the 3/8 in the upper part set against the 4/8 in the lower part in the Allegro molto, the 2/4 against 3/4 in the Andantino, the changing metres in the Allegro marciale, the phrases everywhere displaced in relation to the bar-lines - might have been condemned as formalist if they had not been so ingeniously entertaining.

The composer arranged the Bukoliki for violin and cello in 1962.

Gerald Larner©